Autophagy: self-preservation through cannibalism of proteins and organelles.

The recent excitement about autophagy research is justified; the importance of the pathobiology of this process is obvious. Clearly, functional autophagy is central to basic cellular housekeeping and recycling activity, maintenance of homeostasis, and injury response. An improved understanding of the autophagic process should lead to potentially innovative therapies with direct relevance to surgical diseases. Although autophagy has been one of nature's closely guarded secrets until recently, an abundance of new findings provides substantial promise for therapeutic manipulation of this endogenous process. Stay tuned as we discover and use new therapeutics to take advantage of autophagy in the management of surgery patients.